This invention relates to rail car transporting systems and shipping systems employing the same.
Many large manufacturing plants producing products of considerable bulk and/or weight ship from the place of manufacture to a point of distribution and/or use by rail. In a typical installation, there will be an elongated shipping floor which receives the manufactured products preparatory to their being placed on rail cars. Typically, the shipping floor is flanked or bifurcated by one or more railroad spurs each capable of receiving a plurality of rail cars which are coupled together in a conventional fashion. At the beginning of a shipping cycle, a series of the rail cars is disposed on the spur adjacent the shipping floor and the loading process initiated.
In many instances, the loading of each rail car will progress at a different pace for any of a variety of reasons. For example, when different products are being shipped from the same place of manufacture at different points on the shipping floor, one product may take more time to load than another. For example, a motor grader may typically be driven directly onto a rail car and suitably blocked in place while a motorized scraper may, in part, require hoisting into place on a rail car prior to being blocked. Other large vehicles, fully assembled for testing purposes prior to shipping, may require partial disassembly at the shipping floor prior to being disposed on a rail car. Consequently, when a variety of products, such as those mentioned, are being shipped simultaneously from the same shipping floor at different points thereon, products such as motor graders can be loaded in considerably less time than other products which require partial disassembly prior to loading or hoisting in place.
This, in turn, results in inefficiency in the shipping operation. For once the rail cars at, for example, the point on the shipping floor whereat motor graders are loaded, are fully loaded and blocked, further activity must cease until such time as other rail cars receiving scrapers or other heavy equipment requiring partial disassembly are loaded. This inefficiency is occasioned by the fact that the rail cars are disposed adjacent the shipping floor in a serial fashion and it is uneconomical to remove anything less than the entire string of rail cars disposed on the spur adjacent the shipping floor.
The problem is compounded by fluctuation in railroad schedules. If a railroad locomotive appears prior to the completion of loading of all cars in the string, because the railroad typically is a separate entity from the manufacturing plant, it may be necessary to remove a partially loaded string of cars in order to ensure that those components already loaded are shipped in a timely fashion. When this occurs, loading at the stations adjacent the unused cars must cease until such time as a new string of empty cars is placed on the spur.
Conversely, if the railroad locomotive appears at a time later than scheduled, all activity on the shipping floor must cease since there will be no cars available to receive products to be shipped, all cars at the loading floor already being fully loaded.
Still another factor inhibiting efficiency of such a system is the fact that rail cars as, for example, flat cars, frequently have their load receiving surfaces in various states of disrepair. Where a car having a poorer than average load receiving surface is disposed at a location along the shipping floor to receive a relatively light load, no impediment may exist. However, if the same car is disposed at a station to receive a relatively heavy load, prior to its being loaded, it may be necessary to effect minor repair of the rail car prior to loading which, of course, is time-consuming and contributes to the problems mentioned previously. Should the rail car be in a state of major disrepair, it may be unusable to receive a load of any type with the consequence that it must remain unloaded thereby bringing to a complete halt, any loading activity at the station on the shipping floor whereat it is located.
As a result of the foregoing problems, a manufacturing plant typically may have difficulty meeting shipping schedules and/or may require overly large shipping and repair crews at excessive cost and/or may have to shuffle members of a shipping crew to a repair crew or vice versa any and all of which are inefficient, time-consuming and costly.